The Daily Bleed: May Day! May Day!

MAY DAY

MOTHER JONES
"I'm no lady, I'm a hell-raiser!"

Labor agitator, radical.

WORLD LABOR DAY.

TRADITIONAL FERTILITY FESTIVAL. Welcoming back the Spring.

Ancient Roman FLORALIA, Festival of the Goddess Floralia. Grand processions in England including "Jack in the green," milkmaids, Morris dancers, Robin Hood & his Merry Men.

BELTANE: First day of Celtic summer. Celebrate the fertility of all things with festivals of fire.

US: ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH.

SATIRE DAY.

Keep in mind this is:

Correct Posture Month, National Asparagus Month,
Good Carkeeping Month, National High Blood Pressure Month,
Old Americans Month, Better Sleep Month,
Date Your Mate Month, Fungal Infection Awareness Month,
Revise Your Work Schedule Month

First week is: National Bathroom Reading Week, Carpet Care Improvement Week

Second week is: International Online Romance Week
http://www.onlineromance.com/

Conserve Water/Detect-A-Leak Week

Third week is: Raisin Week, Girls Incorporated Week, Kiwanis Prayer Week

Fourth week is: Poetry Week, International Pickle Week, American Beer Week (begins Last Sunday), Poppy Week, National Surgical Technologists Week.

Important moveable holidays are: first Friday: International Tuba Day; 2nd Wednesday, National Third-Shift Worker's Day; 3rd Friday, National Defense Transportation Day; Monday before Ascension, Pacing the Bounds (Switzerland)

Important Indeterminate Holidays: Late May, Hot Penny Toss Day (Rye, Sussex, UK)

-- MAY DAY! MAY DAY! MAY DAY!

Hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power, poured into a fledgling labor organization, the Knights of Labor.

Beginning on May 1, 1886, they took to the streets to demand universal adoption of the 8-hour day. Chicago was the center of the movement. Workers there had been agitating for an 8-hour day for months, & on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill.

Fears of violent class conflict gripped the city. No violence occurred on May 1 — a Saturday — or May 2. But on Monday, May 3, a fight involving hundreds broke out at McCormick Reaper between locked-out unionists & non-unionist workers McCormick hired to replace them. The Chicago police, swollen in number & heavily armed, quickly moved in with clubs & guns to restore order. They left four unionists dead &many others wounded.

Angered by the deadly force of the police, a group of anarchists, led by August Spies & Albert Parsons, called on workers to arm themselves & participate in a massive protest demonstration in Haymarket Square on Tuesday evening, May 4. The demonstration appeared to be a complete bust, with only 3,000 assembling. But near the end of the evening, an individual, whose identity is still in dispute (possibly a police agent provocateur), threw a bomb that killed seven police & injured 67 others.

Hysterical city & state government officials rounded up eight anarchists, tried them for murder, & sentenced them to death. On 11 November 1887, four, including Parsons & Spies, were executed. All of the executed advocated armed struggle & violence as revolutionary methods, but their prosecutors found no evidence that any had actually thrown the Haymarket bomb. They died for their words — not their deeds.

250,000 people lined Chicago's street during Parson's funeral procession to express their outrage at this gross miscarriage of justice.

For radicals & trade unionists everywhere, Haymarket became a symbol of the stark inequality & injustice of capitalist society. The May 1886 Chicago events figured prominently in the decision of the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity & power of the international working class movement. May Day has been a celebration ever since.

http://www.reocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/GenStrike.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day
http://www.xpdnc.com/links/mayday.html
Nice collection of sites featuring May Day:
http://www.homemadejam.org/mayday.html

1187 -- Springs of Cresson: Death of Jacques de Mailly, Marshal of the Templars, & Roger des Moulins, Master of the Hospitalers. Gerard de Ridefort, Master of the Templars, & two others flee the battle

1380 -- Cecilia Chaumpaigne, a baker's daughter, releases Geoffrey Chaucer from the charges ("de raptu, meo") she had brought against him.
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucer.htm

1543 -- Copernicus circulates "The Little Commentary," showing the heliocentricity of the Solar System. Churches & people react rather badly to the notion that Mankind is not the center of the Universe. 455 years latter, many (especially (F)redites & other rightwingers) still do.

1626 -- New Old World: Renegade from, & opponent to, the Pilgrim colonies, Thomas Moreton raises the Maypole with Amerindian allies. See Frederick Turner's Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness.
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1650 -- England: Hey! Dig This! The Diggers at Iver issue their declaration:
"Those who have by an unrighteous power made merchandise of the earth, giving all to some, & none to others, declare themselves tyranicall & usurping."

Source: [Calendar Riots]

1654 -- England: "Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman, or child, is to let himself, herself, itself be found east of the River Shannon."

An Order from the Parliament.

1672 -- Tattletale Joseph Addison — essayist, poet, statesman, & contributor to The Tatler & The Spectator — lives, England.

1700 -- John Dryden, poet ("All for Love: or The World Well Lost"), dies in London.

1776 -- Germany: Order of the Illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt. The actual name was the Order of Perfectibilists, a secret society of radical secular humanists formed in Bavaria, for the "express purpose of rooting out all religious establishments, & overturning all the existing governments of Europe." The Illuminati plan another of those dictatorships that is supposed to wither away.
http://www.grandconspiracy.com/illuminati.html

1812 -- England: James Brook arrested for trying to destroy Cartwight's Mill. One of those nasty Luddites.
Source: [Luddite Chronology]

1820 -- England: Arthur Thistlewood, English revolutionary, & 4 others are executed for the Cato St. Conspiracy, London.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1830 -- Mother Jones (born Mary Harris) lives, Cork, Ireland. Irish-American anti-war activist & labor radical.
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was born in the year 1830. The renowned Labor organizer, who lived to be 100-years old, said:

"I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression.

My address is like my shoes; it travels with me.

I abide where there is a fight against wrong."

1838 -- France: Louis Champalle lives. Weaver & anarchist, in Lyon where he is arrested November 19, 1882 for agitating during Montceau-les-Mines events & sent to prison for six months in the repressive trial of January 1883 ("Procès des 66"/Trial of the 66). Champalle joined the "Le réveil de la Croix-Rousse" in Lyon in 1892.
http://www.ephemanar.net/mai01.html

1847 -- US: Emancipationist Henry Demareast Lloyd lives.

1849 -- US: Chief Patkanim & the Snoqualmie tribe attack Hudson's Bay Co.'s Fort Nisqually, Washington.

1857 -- Too Many Conquerors in the Kitchen?: William Walker, conqueror of Nicaragua, surrenders to the US Navy.

1860 -- US: Wrong Place, Wrong Time? A colt is killed by a meteorite, New Concord, Ohio.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/thumb/PIA00136.jpg

1866 -- US: Beginning this day for three days, white Democrats & police attack freedmen & white allies in Memphis; 48 are killed.

1868 -- US: Tom Dula, convicted of the murder of Laura Foster, is executed in NC, after writing the song that begins "Hang down your head, Tom Dooley."
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1875 -- US: Government Grant? The St. Louis Democrat exposes the "Whiskey Ring" — a conspiracy of distillery owners & federal officials, including Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Ulysses S. Grant's private secretary, to withhold liquor taxes from the government. Grant used his influence to save his secretary from conviction. In all, 238 persons were indicted — charged with defrauding the Treasury.

1881 -- France: Mystical Christian evolutionist Teilhard De Chardin lives, Auvergne.

1884 -- US: Moses Walker becomes the first black player in major league baseball.
Hazardous duty?: In 1887, on July 14, the "Father of Apartheid Baseball," Adrian "Cap" Anson threatened Newark officials to bench Walker or forfeit the game. It was here Anson shouted his infamous remark, "Get that nigger off the field, there’s a law against that!"
Anson, an excellent player & future Hall of Famer, had clout on & off the field. The ban began.
Soon after league officials of the American Association & the National League announced teams would not be allowed to hire black players in the future, because of the "hazards" black players imposed.

1884 -- France: Eugène Dieudonné lives (1884-1944), Nancy. Individualist, illegalist anarchiste & member of the Bonnot Gang.
http://www.ephemanar.net/mai01.html
[Details / context]

1884 -- US: Sometime during this year, the Federation of Organized Trades & Labor Unions, forerunner of the AFL, passed a resolution stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from & after May 1, 1886." Though the Federation did not intend to stimulate a mass insurgency, its resolution had precisely that effect.
[Sources]

1886 -- US: First nationwide General Strike for 8-hour day, commemorated in 1889 as the first International Labor Day. 340,000 workers in Chicago, Milwaukee & other cities strike. Four demonstrators are killed & over 200 wounded when police attack the Chicago rally. The US will set another day as Labor Day to undercut world solidarity. ANARCHIST

International Workers' Day (May Day) begins in Chicago. 340,000 US workers in Chicago, Milwaukee & other cities strike for the 8-hour workday. Four demonstrators are killed & over 200 wounded when police attack the Chicago rally. US later sets another day as Labor Day to undercut world solidarity.

[Details / context]

1886 -- Australia: Fred Upham from Rhode Island, U.S.A. & the Australian-born Andrade brothers, David & William, form the Melbourne Anarchist Club (M.A.C.). This, the first formal anarchist organisation in Australia, reflected the Boston Anarchist Club. The Andrade brothers also started Melbourne's first anarchist bookstore. (See John Sendy, Melbourne's Radical Bookshops (International Bookshop, 1983)).
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#a

1888 -- US: 19 machinists at the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad assemble in a locomotive pit to decide what to do about a wage cut. They vote to form a union, which became the International Association of Machinists.

1890 -- US: American utopianist Albert Brisbane dies, Richmond, Virginia.

1890 -- US: 30,000 march in Chicago May Day demonstration as the newly prominent American Federation of Labor throws its weight behind the 8-hour day campaign. May Day labor demonstrations spread to 13 other countries.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jcrane.htm
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/crane_walter.html

1890 -- Australia: A large May Day meeting is held in Melbourne in 1890, chaired by Dr Maloney (later a federal Labor MP).
The group of radicals who called this meeting had an inaugural meeting on May Day 1886, to coincide with the US movement protests. Anarchist activists were prominent then, including J. Andrews, "Chummy" Fleming, David Andrade & Monty Miller.

A straggling, tame procession, perhaps,
A butt for burgess scorn;
Its flags are ragged sentiments,
& its music's still unborn.

— Bernard O'Dowd, excerpt from the poem "May Day"

[Details / context]

1890 -- Poland: The first May Day celebration in Poland gathers about 10,000 Warsaw workers. All nine organizers are arrested & sent to prisons in Russia (two of them die there) after the famous "May Day Trial".
Source: Piero/poprostu.pl
http://kontra-punkt.info/

1890 -- Italy: 1° May Demonstrations & clashes in Livorno between workers & authorities occurs.
The anarchico lawyer Pietro Gori, along with 27 students & workers, is accused of rebellion & inciting conflict between the various social classes, & he is indicted as an organizer of a strike to instigate these events.

Arrested on May 13th he is tried & condemned to a year in jail. Gori served time in both Livorno & Lucca before being freed on November 10th, his sentence having been reduced.

Source: [Chronology by Franco Bertolucci]

1891 -- France: Army test their newly designed Lebels machine gun against a peaceful May Day rally at Fourmies where women & children were carrying flowers & palms. Casualties number 14 dead & 40 wounded. The anarchist François Ravachol bombs the Lobau Barracks in Paris in March 1892 as retribution.

Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, & is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; & tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night of suffering. Facing these endless murders & continuous tortures, what's the meaning of society, this crumbling wall, this collapsing staircase? ...

No cry is heeded: whenever a single, louder complaint penetrates the din of sad murmurs, the Lebels is loaded & the troops are mobilized.

— Octave Mirbeau, Ravachol

http://web.archive.org...texts/mirbeau_ravachol.html

1891 -- US: Emma Goldman marches with the Working Women's Society of the United Hebrew Trades in New York's May Day parade.

1891 -- Australia: The first May Day march in Barcaldine occurs today, by striking shearers. The "Sydney Morning Herald" reported 1340 took part.

... So we must fly a rebel flag
As others did before us,
& we must sing a rebel song
& join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O'those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle

— Henry Lawson, excerpt from his poem, Freedom on the Wallaby, composed in Brisbane at the time the striking shearers were facing the troopers guns at Barcaldine.

[Details / context]

1891 -- Italy: La polizia di stato arresta a Roma oltre duecento persone che partecipano ad un comizio a favore della riduzione a 8 ore della giornata lavorativa.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1892 -- US: Anarchists disrupt the Central Labor Union's May Day celebration in Union Square, New York. In retaliation, the organizers of the celebration stop Emma Goldman's speaking by hitching a horse to the open wagon she is using as a platform & pulling it away.
(Hay!! It's cheaper than a taxi!)

1893 -- US: World's Columbian exposition opens in Chicago, Jane Addam's purse snatched at opening ceremonies.

1893 -- England: The Commonweal restarts, under the editorship of H. B. Samuels. Other members of the Commonweal Group include John Turner, Carl Quinn, Ernest Young, Tom Cantwell & Joseph Presburg. Financed by Max Nettlau & Dr Fauset Macdonald, it came out in an edition of eight pages & was issued, except in times of crisis, fortnightly. see John Quail's The Slow Burning Fuse http://www.reocities.com/~johngray/fuse08.htm

1896 -- US: At a demonstration in Union Square, Emma Goldman helps to distribute a May Day anarchist manifesto written by her & a group of American-born comrades in New York.

1898 -- George Dewey commands, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley."

1899 -- Poland: Tzarist police arrests 3000 members of 20,000 May Day demonstration in Warsaw.
Source: Piero/poprostu.pl
http://www.kontra-punkt.info/

1900 -- Flunk the test?: Poet Wallace Stevens, drunk at a dinner for the Harvard junior class, recites his class ode & passes out.
http://baroqueinhackney.blogspot.com/2008/03/day-wallace-stevens-punched-out-ernest.html

1905 -- Poland: Revolution; May Day, 60 workers found dead after fights with police.
http://www.kontra-punkt.info/
Source: Source: Piero/poprostu.pl

1906 -- US: Twelve hundred members of the Iron Molders Union in Milwaukee strike for shorter hours & a pay increase. After two years, the strike ends in defeat.
One employer, Allis-Chalmers, will spend 21,700 dollars for the Burr-Herr Detective Agency. What did the company get for its money? The union reports more than 200 assaults on its members, including union leader Peter Cramer, whose injuries kill him. Another unionist, planted outside Burr-Herr, testifies the agency offered him 10 dollars for each striker he beat up.

The employers also obtain court orders against picketing. The union appealed the injunctions & won. By that time, however, the strike was already lost.

[Insurgent Radio Kiosk]

1906 --
Grève générale en faveur de la journée de huit heures. Violentes manifestations. Clemenceau décrète l'état de siège.
[Sources]

1907 -- France: During a demonstration in Paris, Jacob Law, a Russian anarchist (born in Balta in 1887), puts five bullets into a bus returning to an Imperial battleship. He was sent to prison in Guyana, until released on May 10, 1924. A lifelong anarchist, his memoirs, Dix-huit ans de bagne, appeared 1926.
"On doit supprimer les gouvernements pour vivre dans un monde où le crime disparaître et où l'homme deviendra fort, dans le monde de l'Anarchie"

http://www.ephemanar.net/mai01.html#law

1908 -- Giovanni Guareschi lives (1908-1968). Italian journalist, humorist, & novelist, famous for his stories of an Italian village where Father Camillo, the Catholic priest, is constantly in trouble with the local Communist chief. These two Tom & Jerry figures & their ideological disputes are depicted with warm humor & understanding.

Guareschi spent two years in a German concentration camp, publishing his war experiences in Diario Clandestino 1943-45.
In 1945 Guareschi founded the satirical & Monarchist weekly Candido, in which he offended the Prime Minister & was sentenced to jail for a year in 1954. His Father Camillo short stories started to appear first in the 1930s, but after the war they made him one of the most popular writers of Italy. Many of the stories were adapted to film.

1908 -- US: The anarchist Alexander Berkman addresses a crowd in Union Square on May Day, 1908.

1909 -- England: Rudolf Rocker meets Francisco Ferrer for the first time (just six months before Ferrer is murdered by the Spanish government), during a May Day demonstration in Hyde Park, London. They have tea afterwards with fellow anarchists Errico Malatesta, Fernando Tarrida del Marmol, Warlaam Tcherkesoff, Shapiro.
See Rudolf Rocker, The London Years. in Polish: Rudolf Roker, Francisko Ferer, Malatestom, Viktor Serž

1909 -- Yannis Ritsos lives, Greek Communist poet, Nobel nominee (Tractors).
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1909 -- Argentina: Police open fire on a Federación Regional Obrera Argentina (FORA; previously FOA) demonstration, killing several activists. O 1 de maio de 1909 foi unha conmemoración sanguenta, os enfrontamentos da policía cos pacíficos manifestantes rematou con oito mortos e corenta feridos. A indignación dos traballadores determinou que se convocara unha folga xeral de repulsa aos asasinatos do xefe de policía coronel Ramón Falcón. Para os traballadores máis conscientes había un verdugo culpable de toda a represión; o clima de tensión e vinganza íase apoderando dos activistas sindicais.

1910 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures on anarchism & "Marriage & Love" in Reno, Nevada. A real crapshoot...& a dicey "proposition"?

1910 -- Ukraine: Raya Dunayevskaya lives. Emigrated to the US where she founded the philosophy of Marxist Humanism. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary, she split with him & ultimately founded the News & Letters organization & was involved in this libertarian communist endeavor until her death in 1987.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raya_Dunayevskaya#Biography

1911 -- China: Revolution — Sun Yat-sen becomes first president.

1911 -- México: Climax of land revolt in Baja California led by the Partido Liberal Mexicano; Porfirio Diaz signs a peace treaty with Francisco Madero in Mexico.

1912 -- US: Beginning of the End? Election of Socialist governments in over 20 US cities (plus Eugene Debs gets 900,000 votes for President, including 25,743 in Texass).
Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal Woodrow Wilson wins, & begins instituting segregationist policies throughout the federal government.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/EugeneDebsSocialism.html

1913 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures on the modern drama in Denver, May 1-8, which "brought larger & more representative audiences than we have ever had in Denver.

1913 -- México: First May Day celebrations. Also La Casa del Obrero (House of the Worker) changes it's name to Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of the World-wide Worker).

Source: [La Casa Obrero Mundial]

1915 -- Australia:
The Scientific Spleen Squad (a tiny Sydney anarchist sect, part of the larger Groupe d'Etudes Scientifiques) asks a couple questions:

"What is Anarchism? Who are the Anarchists? Whilst organised slaughter called war is devastating the world; whilst nationalistic lunatics & militaristic maniacs are murdering each other; whilst degenerate abrutis of all sorts are suffering horribly & dying miserably, consequent upon the worlds ignorance & prejudice; our GES is pursuing slowly, but with certainty its logical rational work of the vulgarisation of scientific knowledge & determinedly spreads the contagion of reason more than ever we are able to repeat, in all serenity, & in face of the present events that the present is to us, the future is but to our anarchism our work will stand, the rest will fall & be forgotten.

— fraternally to our friends the world over, the GES of Australia, the 1st of May."
They were the antipodean offshoot of the Groupe d'Etudes Scientifiques (GES for short) of Paris, run by the prodigious author Paraf-Javal. The Sydney group, around from at least 1912, had its own printing facilities, the communist-anarchist press, run by Ralph Carterer, & various addresses in Sydney.

[Details / context]

1916 -- US: Chicago Herald becomes first newspaper to call the new music "Jazz."

1919 -- Germany: "Red Bavaria" suppressed, 600 die. German anarchist Gustav Landauer is killed tomorrow, following his arrest by a unit of the anti-revolutionary Freikorps.

1919 -- US: May Day riots in Boston & throughout country.
[Sources]

1920 -- US: Baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers tie Boston Braves, 1-1, in 26 innings.

1920 -- Japan: May Day rally is held outdoors for the first time. 5000 workers participate, with red & black flags a-flying.
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/japan/briefHistoryJapaneseAnarchism.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Japan
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/japan/sp001883/japchap2.html

1921 -- Japan: Japanese Workers Association clashes with anarchist unions during the May Day gathering.
Source, http://www.ne.jp/asahi/anarchy/anarchy/english/history1.html

1922 -- Italy: Adunate fasciste e manifestazioni socialiste finiscono sovente in scontri che provocano decine di morti. La concorrenza fra i due partiti si fa sempre più sanguinosa.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1923 -- Joseph Heller lives. American novelist, gained world fame with his satirical war novel Catch-22: to fly dangerous combat missions is insane, but if airmen seek to be relieved for mental reasons, the request proves their sanity.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heller.htm

1923 -- France: Ôsugi Sakae, the Japanese anarchist, makes a speech at a May Day gathering in Paris. He is arrested & deported. Osugi returned to Japan, where he was, shortly thereafter, murdered by military police, along with his companion Ito Noe & their 6-year old nephew.
In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell recounts how he met Ito Noe in Japan in 1921. “Dora [Russell’s wife] said to her: “Are you not afraid that the authorities will do something to you?” She drew her hand across her throat, & said, “I know they will sooner or later”.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/anarchy/anarchy/english/history.html Amakasu Incident

1924 -- Terry Southern lives. Likes candy, of course. American novelist/screenwriter, attacked Hollywood's film industry, drugs, tv-shows, religion, clichés of pornography, "dreamgirls" etc. His works aroused critical debates, been labeled pornography or just plain sick. Most notable screenplay was Dr. Strangelove.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

1925 -- Italy: Viene istituita l'Opera nazionale dopolavoro che passerà sotto il diretto controllo del partito nazionale fascista. Il deputato Antonio Gramsci, nel suo unico discorso parlamentare, si pronuncia contro la legge sulle associazioni in quanto concede allo stato la licenza di sciogliere a suo piacere qualsiasi organizzazione. La legge sarà approvata dalla Camera il giorno 19.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1926 -- US: Black female pilot "Brave Bessie" Coleman dies as a result of being thrown from a spinning plane during aero-acrobatics performed before a large audience in Jacksonville, Florida. Born January 26, 1893, she became the first black person to receive a pilot's license.

1926 -- US: Baseball great, Satchel Paige, makes pitching debut in Negro Southern League.
http://www.satchelpaige.com/
http://www.negroleaguebaseball.com/ http://www.negroleaguebaseball.com/

1926 -- Switzerland: "Le Réveil communiste anarchiste" shortens its name, from today on simply called "Le Reveil anarchiste" (The Anarchist Alarm Clock). Luigi Bertoni founded the paper in Genève, in 1900, as "Il Risveglio anarchico, Le Réveil socialiste anarchiste". Bilingual (Italian-French), it printed different articles depending on the language. Bertoni edited the paper until his death in 1947.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet07.html#reveil

1928 -- Ebenezer Howard, founder of the garden-city movement, dies at 78.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1929 -- Germany: Liberal Book Friends (GfB) begins publishing the free monthly illustrated review "Meditation & Departure."
Nice mix of anarchist & contemporary & critical art-related materials. Included Max Baginski, Karl Roche, Erich Mühsam, Fritz Linow, Arthur Lehning, Rudolf Rocker among many others. Each issue included a booklet by some anarchist or sympathetic author (Emma Goldman & Theodor Plievier, for example).
http://ur.dadaweb.de/ask51121.htm
http://ur.dadaweb.de/ask5rz06.htm

1930 -- US: Herbert Hoover again emphasizes his belief in the health of the American economy.
Spring. Four million Americans are out of work. Breadlines continue to form in New York, Chicago & other American cities.
"I am convinced we have now passed the worst." — Herbert Hoover
"There has been more 'optimism' talked & less practiced than at any time during our history." — Will Rogers

1930 -- Little Walter lives, Marksville, La., blues harpist (Quarter to Twelve).
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1931 -- France: The pacifists, anarchists & néo-malthusians Jeanne Humbert & Eugène Humbert begin publishing the newspaper "La Grande Réforme."
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout01.html

1932 -- Paul Doumer, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President of France, assassinated by Russia's Paul Gargalov.

1933 -- US: Christian anarchist "Catholic Worker" newspaper founded, New York City. Dorothy Day & Peter Maurin, anarchist-Catholics (!) who met five months ago, today publish the first issue of their long-running newspaper, in an edition of 2,500 copies. Circulation quickly rose, to 150,000 by 1936. The House of Hospitality opened soon after. Day & the Catholic Workers are that anamoly of being Catholics & anarchists at the same time.
"The greatest challenge of the day
is how to bring about a revolution of the heart —
a revolution which has to start with each one of us."

— Dorothy Day

See Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, p.207

http://www.catholicworker.org/
http://www.youtube.com/user/4854derrida

1936 -- Spain: Saragossa [Zaragoza] Congress, national gathering of the CNT; IV Congrés Confederal de la CNT Saragossa, 01-12 de maig de 1936. Participants include Eusebio Carbó, Juan García Oliver, Horacio Martínez Prieto, Federica Montseny, José Peirats.
[Details here] Zaragossa

1937 -- Spain: The only meetings in Barcelona on May Day is indoors, a small meeting by the 'Those of Yesterday & Those of Today' adhering to the Friends of Durruti Group, & an anarchist nudist group meeting on the value of music.
[Details / context]

1937 -- England: 60,000 people take part in a May Day demonstration & march that includes anarchists for the first time in 30 years. Under the auspices of the London Committee of the C.N.T.-FAI, Emma Goldman speaks at the conclusion of the march in Hyde Park.

1939 -- Judy Collins, folksinger, lives, Seattle, Washington (Send in the Clowns, Clouds).
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1939 -- Ignazio Silone lives. Italian novelist (Bread & Wine), politician, "a socialist without a party, a Christian without a church."
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1939 -- US: Pulitzer Prizes awarded: Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, fiction; Benjamin Franklin, by Carl Van Doren, biography; Selected Poems, by John Gould Fletcher, poetry.
http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/1939

1940 -- Bobby Ann Mason, American novelist, lives, Mayfield, Kentucky.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1940 -- US: The second Catholic Worker House in Los Angeles opens. The first was started by George Putnam in the 1930s, but closed when he moved. This new house opened on East 12th Street, in the black ghetto just south of Skid Row, & was run by Jack Wagner. It closed before the end of WWII. Catholic Worker Houses were inspired by christian anarchists, notably Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin & Ammon Hennacy.
[Source: Jeff Dietrich, Reluctant Resister]

1942 -- US: Having "voluntarily resettled" in Denver, Nisei journalist James Omura writes a letter to a Washington law firm inquiring about retaining their services to seek legal action against the government for violations of civil & constitutional rights & seeking restitution for economic losses. He was unable to afford the $3,500 fee required to begin proceedings.
[Sources]

1945 -- France: First Congress of the Local Federations of the MLE-CNT in exile, held in Paris (-12th). Upwards of 450 anarchist local federations from the exiles in France & North Africa attend & are represented by no fewer than 400 delegates: membership stands at 25,000.
[Details / context]

1946 -- Australia: Beginning of the Pilbara Strike, the first industrial strike by Aboriginal people in Australian history.

1946 -- Australia: Aboriginal Stockmen's Strike. An estimated 600 aboriginal stockmen, organised by Dooley Bin Bin throughout the north of Western Australia, refuse to work until guaranteed a minimum wage of thirty shillings a week.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_title#1946_Aboriginal_Stockmen.27s_Strike
http://www.alc.org.au/about-nswalc/our-history.aspx

1948 -- US: Glenn Taylor, Idaho Senator, arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked "For Negroes."

Our hands are tied on the table
Maybe you can try at the back door man
While the helpless line up on the doorsteps
cause its all they can do to try to get through...
— Sarah Mclachlan, excerpted from Back Door Man

1950 -- South Africa: General Strike against repression.

1950 -- Black poet Gwendolyn Brooks wins the Pulitzer Prize for "Annie Allen."
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1951 -- US: Founding of the National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians union (NABET).

1952 -- Japan: Antigovernment workers & police clash in Tokyo — 2 die, 2,000 injured.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1958 -- High Seas: Crew of the protest ship "Golden Rule" is arrested by US Navy in nuclear test zone, South Pacific. To "protect" US interests we suspect.
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/index.shtml
http://www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicveteran/
http://zvis.com/nuclear/ndb/usnuks.shtml
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/nts.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bm1Bd83qrc

cinemath

1959 -- Italy: A drunkard is stopped by police.

On the evening of May Day, 1959, a drunkard is stopped by police.

Presumed to be a vagrant, he is in fact Renato Caccioppolli, an esteemed mathematics professor at Naples University, grandson of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, & a Communist.

Thus begins the last week of the professor's life...

[Details / context]

1960 -- Russia: Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane is shot down over Sverdlovsk (public discovers these provocative American spy flights have been routine; consider if Russia had been flying over the US).

Fly me to...? The capture of Gary Powers & exposure of the U-2 put an end to the spy missions over the Soviet Union as well as to Eisenhower's hopes for a test ban treaty at the upcoming Paris summit. Powers, who served 17 months of his 10-year sentence in a Soviet prison camp, was ultimately exchanged for a Russian spy.

1965 -- Vanguard musical performer Spike Jones dies.

1965 -- Wales: Second Factory for Peace opens, Onllwyn, Dulais Valley.

1965 -- Canada: Radicals bomb the US consulate in Montreal.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]

1966 -- The Society for Creative Anachronism starts. & none too soon.

1966 -- 500,000 Vietnamese march for end of war.

1968 -- France: During the traditional May Day demonstrations fights break out around a black flag as Communists try to exclude the anarchists from the procession.